From current MCRFB NEWS wires 2012
Emmy-winning TV Host and ‘Moon River’ Crooner Died Tuesday Night, September 25
By Los Angeles Times Staff | September 26, 2012; 7:47 a.m.
LOS ANGELES — Andy Williams, whose soothing baritone and relaxed performing style made him one of America’s top pop vocalist and a popular TV variety-show host in the 1960s when he recorded hits such as “Moon River” and “Days Of Wine And Roses,” has died. He was 84.
Williams, who announced in late 2011 that he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, died Tuesday at his home in Branson, Mo., his family announced.
The Iowa-born Williams began singing professionally as a boy in with his three older brothers in the 1930s, and he went solo when the quartet broke up in the early ’50s.
After becoming a regular featured singer on Steve Allen’s “Tonight” show in 1954, Williams had hits with songs such as “Canadian Sunset,” “Butterfly,” “Are You Sincere,””Hawaiian Wedding Song” and “The Village Of St. Bernadette.”
He continued to turn out hits in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Can’t Get Used To Losing You,” “Dear Heart,” “Charade,” “Music To Watch Girls By” and “(Where Do I Begin) Love Story.“
The singer hosted “The Andy Williams Show” on NBC from 1962 to 1967. After doing three specials a year for two years, he returned to the weekly series from 1969 to 1971.
“The Andy Williams Show” won three Emmy Awards, and its casual, sweater-wearing host received two Emmy nominations.
“In some cases, people who go on television, their record sales drop off; mine seemed to go up,” Williams told the Orlando Sentinel in 1991.
“I think it’s because the music is kinda soft and easy and it’s not jamming down anybody’s throat. It’s just there and people find it pleasant and they go out and buy the albums.”
“The Andy Williams Show” featured established entertainers such as Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Jonathan Winters and Phyllis Diller as well as newer talents such as Linda Ronstadt, the Mamas and the Papas, Elton John and the Jackson 5.
Williams also regularly featured the Osmond Brothers, who were initially billed as “a youthful barbershop harmony group from Ogden, Utah” when they debuted on the show in 1962.
A popular feature of Williams’ TV program was the annual Christmas show, on which he would be surrounded by his family members.
So popular were the Christmas shows that when the weekly series went off the air, Williams told the Chicago-Sun Times in 2000, “we got thousands of pieces of mail” asking him to come back, which he did by hosting annual Christmas TV specials for many years. He later did Christmas shows in theaters around the country as well.
Williams said he never tired of singing “Moon River,” whose melody he considered “beautiful” and whose lyrics he viewed as “timeless.”
“You wouldn’t believe how ‘Moon River’ became a hit,” he said in a 1989 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “I was having dinner with (songwriters) Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, who had just finished recording the movie, ‘Breakfast At Tifanny’s,’ with Audrey Hepburn singing ‘Moon River’ out on the balcony with a guitar.
“So Mancini and Mercer played this song for me, which I thought was great. But my record company was really into singles then, and they said: ‘I don’t think phrases like ‘my Huckleberry friend’ will make it with the kids — they won’t know what it means.”
But about four weeks before the 1962 Academy Awards program, he recalled, “I was invited to sing ‘Moon River’ on the Oscars show, and so Columbia Records decided we ought to rush a ‘Moon River’ album into the stores, because that song looked like a shoo-in for the ‘best song’ Oscar.
“So they quickly put out an album, had it in the stores on the day of the Oscars, and the next morning it sold 500,000 copies.”
The son of a railroad mail clerk, Williams was born December 3, 1927, in Wall Lake, Iowa. As a boy, he began singing with his three older brothers — Bob, Don and Dick — in the local Presbyterian church choir.
“The very first time he heard his four sons harmonize together, my dad became a man with a dream and a mission in life, convinced we had a future as professional singers,”Williams wrote in his 2009 memoir “Moon River And Me.”
With their father as their manager and “driving force,” the Williams landed a 15-minute show every weekday morning on radio WHO in Des Moines in 1936 when he was 8.
In 1941, the family moved to Chicago, where the Williams brothers began singing on the popular “National Barn Dance” on WLS Radio, for which they also did a weekday morning show.
The family later moved to Cincinnati, where the Williams Brothers did a morning radio show on WLW and made guest appearances on the station’s other programs. In early 1944, after two years in Cincinnati, the family headed west.
In Hollywood, the Williams Brothers got two big breaks: Bing Crosby hired them to do the backing vocals on his 1944 vocal hit, “Swinging On A Star” and MGM signed them to a contract. They appeared in a half a dozen forgettable movies, including “Kansas City Kitty.”
In 1947, the Williams Brothers teamed with singer comedienne Kay Thompson to form a critically acclaimed nightclub act that toured the country for a number of years. The Williams Brothers split up in 1953.
After 2 1/2 years as a regular on Steve Allen’s “Tonight” show, Williams hosted summer replacement variety series in 1957, ’58 and in ’59, before launching his long-running NBC variety show in 1962.
In 1961, he marries Paris-born Claudine Longet, then a young Las Vegas dancer, with whom he had three children, Noelle, Christian and Bobby. Bobby was named after their close friend, Bobby Kennedy.
Williams and Longet were divorced in 1975. When Longet was charged in 1976 with the shooting death of her boyfriend, skiing champion Vladimir (Spider) Sabich, Williams offered her his support.
He later said he received only positive feedback for publicly supporting his ex-wife, who claimed the pistol went off by accident. She was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 30 days in jail in 1977.
Williams was the first performer to headline Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas when it first opened in 1966, and he remained a headliner there for two decades.
Williams’ survivors include his second wife, Debbie; his three children, Robert, Noelle and Christian; six grandchildren; and brothers Don and Dick. His sister Jane and brother Bob have passed on.
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(Article was edited and condensed; article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, September 26, 2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsAvKS1GD6Q&feature=related
